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Kurtis R. Schaeffer

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Kurtis R. Schaeffer is the Frances Myers Ball Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He is a student of the literary history and culture of Tibet, with a particular interest in poetry, life writing, narrative, and contemplative literature from across the Tibetan plateau. His books include Himalayan Hermitess: The Life of a Tibetan Buddhist Nun; The Culture of the Book in Tibet, and (with Matthew Kapstein and Gray Tuttle) Sources of Tibetan Tradition, which is the largest anthology of Tibetan Buddhist literature in translation to date. Most recently he published The Life of the Buddha in the Penguin Classics series, which includes a translation of a beautiful Bhutanese story of the Buddha from Bhutan’s golden age of literature. He is currently finishing a translation of select works of Tibetan meditation literature, also for the Penguin Classics series.